The present disclosure relates to aircraft flight path optimization and, in particular, to generating optimal climb control trajectories using nonlinear programming.
A flight management system (FMS) is a computer-based system on-board an aircraft that performs a number of in-flight tasks, including in-flight management of a flight plan. FMSs have been in use for many years, and the programming techniques used by FMSs heretofore are designed for the computing capabilities of prior generations of computerized systems. For example, prior FMSs still in service today typically make assumptions regarding many of the complex and varied parameters regarding a flight path, including but not limited to fixed (i.e., constant) values for aspects regarding the aircraft and its performance characteristics and a constant value for aircraft operations such as, for example, a constant aircraft speed during a climb portion of flight. Such FMSs typically assume a constant speed (not a real-world constraint) during a climb portion of the flight path and rely on lookup tables to determine the constant climb speed to report to a given cruising altitude and velocity.
Therefore, there exists a desire to provide a system and process that can generate control trajectories based on actual conditions for particular flights as opposed to assumed constraints, including optimized flight paths.